Lady Gaga appeared last night at the Coachella festival in front of tens of thousands of little monsters, as she calls her fans, and in front of millions around the world who watched online her official return as a pop star. For an hour and a half she changed a hundred outfits and sets, performing all the hits, both new and old, except one.
After years of functioning more as Stephanie Germanotta and doing everything except being Lady Gaga, now that her Coachella performance ended, it can be said with confidence that the queen mother of avant-garde pop has returned in all her strangeness. For an hour and a half Gaga sang, danced, changed costumes and sets, and delivered.
When the set ended, fan pages declared that this was the first performance in 17 years where she did not perform Just Dance, her debut single and breakthrough hit. It is unclear why this happened tonight, but the ways of Gaga are mysterious and perhaps we will get answers later, or not.
Apart from the missing first hit, it is really hard to complain about the setlist, which was divided into four acts and was full of everything: opening with Bloody Mary, a song she had not performed since 2018, Abracadabra from the latest album including the eternal Judas, the new and excellent Garden of Eden, Poker Face which is probably bigger than her, and exciting paparazzi moments.
When Gaga released MAYHEM, her new album last March, she chose to include Die With a Smile, a collaboration with Bruno Mars. A global mega-hit, of course, but it did not quite match the album’s mood. In the performance version she performed it on a piano decorated with skulls. Fair, it worked.
Gaga closed the first day of the Coachella festival in California, and there are two main conclusions. It feels that the festival is finally returning to relevance, after a lull caused by the pursuit of country music which returned to center stage in the United States. And secondly, Lady Gaga has returned definitively. It already felt that way when the album came out, but after a performance like this, there is no mistaking it.